I've probably shot myself in the foot this week after highlighting an error in a book because we've been doing proof reading of our own here and if anyone mentions proof-reading to me any more I really might have a fit of the vapours.
I must bring you up to date on happenings though because this is the bit of the finished book the likes of us don't usually witness.I always thought the labour-intensive process of giving birth to a book was the writing of it, well don't believe a word of it, it's the proof reading.
Bugle Boy by Len Chester (aka the Tinker and father of dgr all her life) and to be published by Long Barn Books in October is all going along very nicely.Everyone is working very hard on it.
Ages ago photos and all sorts of precious documents were entrusted to the Royal Mail and off to Long Barn via Hilary at the Village post office, she loves it all.Utter the words, "this is very important/ precious/ must not get lost" and it gets her full attention, you sense she'd almost like to walk it there herself.
Then the edited manuscript with the photos in place came back and we had the first chance to read it in book-ish form as a pdf file complete with the Duke of Edinburgh's foreword which is something very special indeed and now we've proof read it all.
This involved four of us this end, the Tinker, Bookhound, Offspringette and moi reading it hundreds of times, over and over again and then sitting around the kitchen table on a wet Thursday afternoon for yet another of those sessions that will be a long-cherished memory.
The Tinker arrived with cakes and so fortified with a pot of tea we started.
"That should be an apostrophe"...
"why?"...
"because it should"...
"did you mean to say that?"...
"yes"...
"is that really how you spell that?"...
"yes"
"P86, line 8, word missing...where's it gone?"
Offspringette and her million words per minute typing skills creating a table of corrections.
There were some very funny moments as we had the primary historical source in our midst and not least a very arduous working out of an old £sd sum of money that taxed us heatedly to our limits.This times that times that divided by 240, then with 75 left over we took an age to make that into 6s3d.How on earth did we used to calculate that money?
Glimpses of dust jacket ideas became definitive designs and that means it's really definitely happening and it will be in shops and it will be a real book.The Tinker fancies a life-sized picture of himself in the bookshop in town, we've said he might as well just go and stand in there all day...which he probably will if he sees his very own book on the shelf.
Who'd have thought it? First book at 82 years young.
Only a few months to go and we're all a little bit excited and if you find any mistakes please don't tell me.
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